logic for the government
Well, we've come to a sorry pass when it falls to Ms B, the woman who just wrote an entire blog post in lolcat, to supply the government of the day with its rudimentary logic tools.
But there you go. It happen. Srsly.
According to the BBC, our Business Secretary John Hutton is calling for a "celebration" of the ability of rich people to get rich. He says it's one of the best things about Britain! I personally feel it looks a trifle odd coming right on top of the information that MPs can claim up to £250 on expenses without even producing a receipt - and that they can claim up to £400 on food bills in a month as "additional expenses" (my heart goes out to the poor guy in the tribunal who pointed out that they'd have had to eat no matter where they were, and thus it couldn't be considered an "additional expense" - poor sap). Oh, but anyway, where were we? Oh yes, no srsly, wtf!! Da Biznis Guy he say:
"It is statistically possible to have a society where no child lives in a family whose income is below the poverty line - 60% of median average income - but where there are also people at the top who are very wealthy."
Ms B say: no it isn't. Raise the median you may: but if it is still a median by definition some will be below it. The only way you can guarantee that no children are living beneath it is to kill the kids. Or kidnap them.
"In fact, not only is it statistically possible - it is positively a good thing."
Ms B say - er - what does this mean?
"So rather than questioning whether high salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country."
Da Pope he say: high salaries are now a mortal sin. So actually the moral question it isn't even in it. John Hutton he have a high salary. Do we see a connection?
"Rather than placing a cap on that success, we should be questioning why it is not available to more people."
Ms B again: this will be because they are too busy being paid not very much to have time to go and seek more. Being paid not very much is actually a much more time-consuming way of life than being rich.
"We want more millionaires in Britain not less. Our overarching goal that no-one should get left behind must not become translated into a stultifying sense that no-one should be allowed to get ahead."
Ms B agrees with this and wants to know why she can't claim £250 on expenses, and call her monthly food habit an "additional expense", without a receipt.
Kthxbai Johnny.
5 comments:
Remind me which party is in power at Westminster ...
"Ms B say: no it isn't. Raise the median you may: but if it is still a median by definition some will be below it. The only way you can guarantee that no children are living beneath it is to kill the kids. Or kidnap them."
The claim being responded to wasn't that it was statistically possible to have a society where no child would live in a family with an income below the median household income. The claim was that it was statistically possible to have a society in which no child would live in a family with an income below the poverty line (defined explicitly in the quoted passage as 60% of median income). And that's certainly possible, at least statistically.
Also, it's not even true that by definition some must be below the median. To find the median of some set of numbers you arrange them in order and the median is the one in the middle (or the average between the two middle values in the case of a series with an even number of members). Consider the following series:
20, 20, 20, 20, 80, 90, 100.
The median value is 20 and no member of the series is below that.
But of course to say that something is statistically possible isn't to say that it's economically possible, let alone socially desirable. So the real problem with the claim isn't that it's wrong (it isn't), but that statistical possibility is a red herring in this kind of discussion.
Andy, I believe they used to be rather quaintly called the Labour Party...
Peter, hi and welcome - and who ARE you? Are you a mathematician in our midst?
Anyway, incomes are spread much more thinly than your example row of 20s; as long as the minimum wage stays even remotely near where it is, I feel that 60% of the median income WILL be well below the median - and I don't see how it will be possible to have no child living below it without resorting to murder.
Funny: I was watching Danton tonight...
No, I'm not a mathematician. I'm a philosophy graduate student (English, but living in America) who came across your blog a little while ago while reading Bryan Appleyard's.
Anyway, I hope it's clear that I wasn't sticking up for Hutton. My point was just that what he claimed is statistically possible is indeed statistically possible, so it's a mistake to base any criticisms of him on the denial of that claim. Of course, what we really care about is whether it's economically possible, so Hutton is being slippery here, saying something that true about statistics in the hope that we will draw conclusions about economics which are false. In short, he's not lying, but he is being weaselly. (I'm not saying that being weaselly is any less reprehensible than lying, just that it's not the same thing.)
My example series of numbers was just meant to show that it's wrong to say that if some number is the median of a set then by definition some members of that set will be below it. I was just making a point about what does and what doesn't follow from the definition of median, I wasn't suggesting that actual income distributions in modern Britain looked (or could be made to look) anything like the numbers on my list.
So you may well be right (I strongly suspect that you are) that the only way to guarantee that no child is living in a household below the poverty line would be to murder those who are. But that's a claim about what is and isn't politically/economically possible; it doesn't follow directly from any of the statistical definitions being employed here. I don't think the substance of your criticisms depend on saying it does, so I hope you'll consider these remarks as a friendly amendment to those criticisms. That was how they were intended.
Peter, thanks for that - your argument has beauty and grace and you are, of course, much more accurate than me. So no offence! I often rely on more intellectually rigorous readers to tether my flights of fancy... You'd have won me over, anyway, saying you came over from Bryan Appleyard.
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